Yellow paint peeled away from a wooden frame of a crank out window in our kitchen, where I sat and stared from the table – remembering the child picking, stripping, and tapping at bubbles of color on a bedroom wall next to the kitchen. I would watch as mother painted, father watched.
Fresh air enters a space called home. A room cluttered with extra chairs, an old toaster, brown spice rack, flowers which hung near the open window. Magnets on a refrigerator door telling others where you had been, before.
Father, like clockwork, checked each burner and the pilot light. From my bedroom I watched his palm touch metal to test for heat before turning on the night light.
Mother, you are here, sitting across from me, smoking a Chesterfield, and you just pushed those awkward blue eye glasses up toward your eyes, but soon, they will fall again, and you push them up, again. Then, lifting up a can of beer, sipping it, slicing a piece of cheddar cheese – I hear crunching of a cracker in your mouth – now, your fingers toy with a deck of cards, shuffling, splitting them, shuffling a second time, and you begin playing solitaire.
It’s obvious, you want to talk, because you are here, I feel you. I felt you last week, during class as I crossed wooden floors glaring over shoulders of my students – as you placed words in front of my eyes.
It’s obvious you came to talk, or perhaps scream – you were, always rights. Today I think about those days and wonder what it might have been if I listened – Mother knows what God gave me – she wants to yell, “Create.”
She’s ignoring this idle talk – to me. She folded her deck.
I felt a brush of air against my neck, heard cards slapping on our Formica table; someone closed the crank out window – I knew you were here.
(Excerpt from Yesterday’s Child)